Brief Notices

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The Price by Karl-Heinz Schnibbe with Alan F. Keele and Douglas F. Tobler. (Salt Lake City, Utah: Bookcraft, 1984), 126 pp., $6.95. 

If you’ve ever wondered what Mormons were doing in Germany during Hitler’s rise to power, you may be interested in this book. Karl Heinz Schnibbe was a Mormon teenager in Nazi Germany who, along with several of his friends, most notably Helmuth Huebener, tried to spread a voice of reason throughout Nazi Germany by distributing mimeographed tracts of BBC broadcasts. Schnibbe sketches his life in Germany, the mood and activities in his Mormon branch, his anti-Nazi activities, and his capture, trial, and sentencing. Huebener was executed. Schnibbe’s years as a political prisoner and later prisoner of war in Russia are recounted, as well as his attempts to return to a normal life after seven years of harsh deprivations. 

The book is short and may leave some questions unanswered, but it is a fascinating look at someone who tried to make a difference and the consequences of that choice. 

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Moments That Matter by Hoyt W. Brewster, Jr. (Salt Lake City, Utah: Bookcraft, 1986), 83 pp., $7.95. 

Hoyt W. Brewster is identified on the cover as a Ph.D., noted Church teacher and popular lecturer as well as manager of curriculum planning and development for the Church. This little book is a collection of “true stories about choices, decisions, and the differences they can make in our lives.” For the author and many of his sources, life’s choices are clear — either we choose right or we choose wrong. We move closer to exaltation or we follow Satan. Many of his stories involve Word of Wisdom choices—the cigarette passed up, the sip of wine taken in a moment of weak ness. Most stories have been previously published and some appear in Church lesson manuals. 

The author admonishes us to be single minded, to beware of those “who would persuade us to bend just a little … . They may feign friendship, but they should be recognized for the wolves of prey that they are” (p. 78). We should beware also of lost opportunities, heed the advice of our leaders, and listen to the promptings of the spirit. Otherwise we may put in eternal jeopardy our spiritual progress. 

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Saltair by Nancy D. McCormick and John S. McCormick (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1985), 109 pp., $9.95 paper, $19.95 cloth. 

From the time Mormon pioneers settled the Salt Lake Valley in the summer of 1847, people have looked to the Great Salt Lake for recreation. In 1870 two lakeside resorts began operation. By the turn of the century eight resorts had been built, four on the south shore and four on the east. The most popular and best remembered was Saltair. The Mormon church built it in 1893 with two things in mind: to provide “wholesome” recreation for Mormons so they would not have to patronize non Mormon resorts, and to develop a “Coney Island of the West” that would advertise Utah as no longer a strange, isolated land of curious people and practices. Mormon leaders, in other words, wanted to have the best of both worlds — they wanted to join the world and at the same time minimize its influences and avoid its excesses. In less than a decade the first goal had clearly triumphed at the expense of the second. Saltair is the first full-length history of that resort. It contains chapters on previous “pleasure resorts” on the Great Salt Lake; the Mormon church’s construction of it; its golden years from 1893 until its destruction by fire in 1925; its subsequent rebuilding; its hard times during the Great De pression of the nineteen thirties; and its World War II years and after. The book is illustrated with more than one hundred old photographs, advertisements, and post cards and concludes with a brief bibliographical essay. 

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The Next Time We Strike: Labor in Utah’s Coal Fields, 1900-1933 by Allan Kent Powell (Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press, 1985), xix, 272 pp., $19.95. 

The Next Time We Strike is the first complete history of the struggle for unionization in the Utah coalfields. The introductory chapter provides an overview of significant developments within labor and the coal industry in the state. Subsequent chapters deal with major labor strikes in 1901, 1903, 1922, and 1933, clandestine efforts to establish a union foothold in the 1910s and 1920s, and the major mine dis asters at Winter Quarters on 1 May 1900 when 200 miners were killed and at Castle Gate on 8 March 1924 when 171 men lost their lives. 

Miner attempts to organize a union were resisted by mine owners through such measures as company spies, blacklists, yellow-dog contracts, discharges, smears, and calls for the National Guard. How ever in 1933 when New Deal labor policies encouraged the establishment of labor unions, mine owners were forced to choose between the more conservative United Mine Workers of America or the radical, communist led National Miners Union. Despite three decades of bitter opposition to the United Mine Workers, mine owners suddenly found themselves allies with their former enemy in a successful attempt to defeat the National Miners Union efforts in Utah. 

The conduct of Mormon Church leaders toward the union movement is carefully documented, and the attitudes of Utahns to the non-Mormon, Southeast European immigrants who came to mine Utah coal, provide an interesting and seldom seen glimpse of Utah and Mormon history. 

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Pioneer Trails West by The Western Writers of America, Don Worcester, editor (Caldwell, Idaho: The Caxton Printers, Ltd., 1985), xx, 292 pp., $24.95. 

Written by nineteen contributors, this book covers all of the major trails which developed as a result of westward expansion. Included is a chapter on the Mormon Trail written by S. George Ellsworth. He includes a brief historical account of the Mormons and the reasons behind their move west; information on the two stages of the development of the trail; an account of the first group over the trail; the experiences of a “typical experience for emigrants”; outfitting posts, etc. 

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The Hotel: Salt Lake’s Classy Lady. The Hotel Utah, 1911-1986 by Leonard J. Arrington and Heidi S. Swinton (Salt Lake City: The Westin Hotel Utah, 1986), viii, 101 pp., $19.95. 

Opening in 1911, the Hotel Utah has played an important role in the history of Salt Lake City. The Hotel was built under the direction of Joseph F. Smith who as Trustee-in-Trust for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints held 3,650 of 10,000 shares. Smith was also the first president and director of the Utah Hotel Company. The book, which is arranged chronologically, discusses the construction and management of the hotel and then goes on to discuss each significant historical period in the hotel’s history. The book also gives a chronology of the hotel as well as a list of the officers, directors, and managers.